


The Widening Gyre

by SenkoWakimarin



Series: Let Them Eat Flesh [3]
Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Blood and Injury, Cannibalism, M/M, This Is Super Horny for What it Is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-28 05:28:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16717347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: Things are ending, but it's not the end.





	The Widening Gyre

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the 'sorta zombies' line, this follows 'I Wanna Be Yours' and 'Warm'.

Everything is rushing toward some kind of conclusion, barely in the control of either of them, and that makes it somehow feel very important to take the time to do this.

A line of poetry cycles again and again through his head. Yeats, utterly inappropriate: _Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / mere anarchy is loosed upon the world_. This is not the end of the world, and certainly there is no recently ended war for them to be muddling through the aftermath of. Perhaps when this is finished -- perhaps when Frank has to give this man back to his family, when this weird boil of trust and need bursts and coats them both in hot, poisoned blood, painting them both as the fools they’ve let themselves become… perhaps, then, they could call the war over.

Certainly, though, when the blade slides into his shoulder, mirroring the first time they did this, when David couldn’t stop apologizing and Frank was fighting a fitful, poorly timed erection; certainly then, as blood bubbles from the cut and runs hot and red down his back, they’re both full of _passionate intensity._

Are they the worst, then, of the men involved in this story? Frank doubts that, a cannibal and his willing victim though they may be. The torturers, the murderers, the betrayers of trust -- they are the enemy for a reason, not just for their slights against Frank or David, but because they are the worst sort of monster, slinking, prowling through the world.

Frank thinks, for one horrible moment, of the look in Bill’s eye as he aimed his gun down that stairwell. As he looked at him with the full intention to kill.

David pulls him from that, shoving up against him, shuddering, unable to himself: he’s hungry, oh yes, and his nose is full of Frank’s smell; his sweat, his blood. The knife is in the sink, clattered alongside the shrapnel Frank had jerked free from his skin, stradling the bloody curve of the porcelain, and the flat of David’s tongue is pressed against Frank’s skin, chasing the blood up to its source. He licks a long, wet stripe up Frank’s back, and Frank can tell just by the grip of his hands that David is as hard as he is.

This is the end of things, this is the last time they could ever do this, because after this, with David having given them over to Madani, they will be playing for the finale. It is as bloody and as impulsive as anything else they’ve done together, and Frank’s pain, physical, only highlights the ache of knowing that soon it will all be over. Better or worse, David will go home and Frank --

Well, Frank doesn’t know. What is left in the world for a man who feels most complete when being carved apart for a friend’s meal?

David’s mouth closes over the chunk only mostly cut out of Frank’s back, David’s tongue hooking into the cut, his teeth closing on the raw meat of him. He bites, moaning in obscene appreciation, into the flesh and then pulls back sharply, pulling his precious mouthful free. Frank makes a sound, something broken between a grunt and a shout, so hard it’s really just another point of pain for him, and he listens to the awful, sweet sound of David swallowing him.

Shoved, abruptly, up against the wall by the sinks, crowded there, David speaks into Frank’s ear, his breath hot with excitement. He feels warm -- god, he feels _warm._

“I could keep going. I think I could eat you alive, Frank. You taste so good, God, and I think you’d let me,” David breathes against Frank’s ear, and Frank can hear his arousal and his shame. He’s a predator with cornered, willing prey, and he’s supposed to be above that kind of thinking, above the kind of impulse that demands he use his teeth. But there’s blood in his beard, brushing Frank’s skin, and they’re both trembling.

Frank doesn’t want David guilty about any of this. Frank wants David healthy and happy and home, and if he’s completely honest he wants, desperately, to be part of that home. So he turns his head carefully, toward David, kissing him, licking the blood, his own blood, from those lips. He twists, and David lets him, so they stand chest to chest, David devouring his mouth now instead of his flesh. This is the end, the end of what they have, and by this time tomorrow who knows if they’ll even both be alive. This is the end, and David holds him like he might break, here and now. Roots him into this moment, like it can go forever, like they can in some way stay here, together, like this, eternally.

Frank lifts his hands, despite the way it hurts his new wounds to do so, and frames David’s face in his fingers. He doesn’t mind the taste of his own blood -- might, actually, be starting to enjoy it in this context -- but he hates the warm transfer of tears from David’s cheeks to his. He thumbs at the tracks, smoothing them away, and David makes this wounded noise, a sob and a moan.

“I was so scared,” he breathes, his hands like heated iron on Frank’s sides, holding him close as Frank studies his gaze. “The news, the reports, I kept waiting to hear they’d killed you, and all I could do was sit and watch, do you understand? I went cause I didn’t have a _choice_ , Frank, it was the only thing I could do try and to keep you…”

“Keep me,” Frank echoes, the words soft, achingly sweet in the incomplete promise of them. David might be warm, might look lively just now, but it’s not enough for him to manage a real blush -- Frank sees enough of the signs of his embarrassment in the wideness of his eyes, in the way his gaze won’t quite connect with Frank’s.

It would be easy to insist that he stick with his initial declaration that this partnership was over. Words are words and they often contradict action -- the impulse to tell David, who had been trembling when he followed Frank in here, who’s hands had been stiff and icy when he’d started laying stitches in Frank’s scalp, to get the knife and take a last bite had been exactly that -- impulse. Frank didn’t regret it, but none of it changed the fact that this was the end.

But there are many ways to close out a thing. Hard and cruel ways; gentle, easy ways. It’s up to each person to figure out how they want to end any one thing.

He feels his blood soaking into the waistband of his pants, tastes it when he kisses David one more time. Neither of them are hard anymore, and it’s almost a shame -- a final fuck might have said the things Frank can’t find words for, might have properly contextualized the fear David voiced. Sex was as much communication as it was a physical act, and it had been the only way either of them had with any success spoken their gratitude for one another, their trust, their fondness.

“We don’t get to keep this,” he finally says. “None of it. Now that I know -- now that it’s all laid out, I need to finish it. Those men die, for what they took. That’s what we started, and it’s how it goes. If I die doin’ that, then…”

He can’t finish. Not with David staring at him, eyes watery again and jaw set in something like anger. He steps around David, out of the bathroom, not wanting to listen as David starts talking, following him, about ancient Rome, about why they started this, as if they’d had a choice but to come to this point, as if there was choice in any of this and not just a sick sort of eventuality. Memento mori, the living, the dead; it’s all pretty words, but Frank is tired. He thinks, really, David is too. So if they can finish this, then really, mustn’t they? Is it not the duty of all moving things to rush toward stillness?

This is the end, and they’ve had that final, lingering moment, that exquisite display of trust and need, the outpouring of sentiment. It’s time to move now, time to act. He’s resigned, firmly set, on seeing this all through to its ultimate, bloody conclusion.

And then he looks at David’s screens, one last look at this family he has no claim to but who have dug hooks tight into his heart. At this hour, they should all be home, awake and together, and it hurts to think they might never know what becomes of him, but that pain is part of family, isn’t it? Loss, it’s really just part of having anything.

So he looks into the playback screens, hungry for one last look at what isn’t his, what he so badly wants. And of course -- it’s really par for the course, isn’t it -- what he sees when he really looks, what he sees and what he _can’t_ see, makes him go cold.

It changes a lot, calling David’s increasingly frantic attention to the recordings, but it’s still just unspooling thread, rolling inexorable to its end.


End file.
